


Rhythm of the Derplords

by FriendlyNeighbourhoodNecrodancer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5066200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendlyNeighbourhoodNecrodancer/pseuds/FriendlyNeighbourhoodNecrodancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A serious story with character building and emotion? THAT'S A PADDLIN'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhythm of the Derplords

"In the mountains lies a cave," said the bantiest woman of your village, known throughout the land for the dankest of memes. "Within, you would find great danger," she murmured sagely, her sagging cheeks swaying as she nodded. "And past the danger, a way to rid ourselves of Lord Period's tyranny."

Lord Period. The end of all. His thousand year reign of blood had been a plague upon your people for roughly a thousand years, and the thought of his prone dead body at you feet words must have lit of fire of hope inside of you for here you found yourself clinging to the side of the mountain like the media to Hillary Clinton.

At the very least, you hoped it was THE mountain. There were a lot of mountains round these parts, so many you could barely swing a cat without hitting one. You knew this from several pet shops worth of scientific experimentation, leaving yourself with the hardest of guns, capable of suplexing several small children.

Those ripped guns were serving you well, for scaling the mountain was a perilous task, even on the brightest of days. And you had chosen to climb the blasted pile of granite at night.  _For the vine,_ you told yourself as you heaved and hoed bodily up the stone.

And there you saw it, almost glowing through the night's thick cloak like a fat blunt. Your arms were burning with the intensity of a middle aged alcoholic's urinary tract infection, but you knew it would all be worth it, as you lifted yourself onto the desolated plateau were the door stood.

Once it would have towered over you, dark and majestic like your average NBA player, but rot had stolen the strength from the wood, and left age in its place, so brittle and paled it looked like you could kick it down. "Who made you?", you murmured gently, stroking the golden bands of silver along its length. Somehow you knew something more than a door had been laid before you. Something mystical. Something important.

With your knee high, steel toed boots, you kicked the door down with a single blow, the crack almost as satisfying as the groan of pain a middle aged might give if the steel had met their nuts. Splinters and dust clouded the passage before you, almost trying to shield your entry, but you slipped in, like an intrusive thought when you held a new born child.

Down and down, deeper and deeper, you ran ahead, following the coiling passage with the haste of a pastel blue hedgehog. Without a torch to guide your way, you had to feel you way down, strangely ineffective as you were sprinting with all your legs could muster, like a lower-middle class American to Wal-Mart on Black Friday. More than once you considered slowing down, and you considered it again as a leg buckled on an uneven stone, throwing you into a downward tumble.

Several pebbles tried to stop your progress, standing bravely in your path, but you crushed their futile effort, every one falling beneath the onslaught of your face, ribs and knees. Finally the passage leveled off, and you slowed enough to stand. Strangely enough, you would find mysterious bruises on your legs had you chanced to check, but it would have been extremely bizarre for you to start stripping off your trousers with a axe wielding centaur in the room with you.

He was 9 feet tall, with a corded chest, shaped like a triangle with the pointy edge up, that rippled with every move, every pec at least as thick as your waist. His belly was like a shield, it looked so hardened. His face was like a shield, it looked so cold. His shield was like a shield, not in that it was particularly hard looking or sturdy but because it was held in his left hand, as most shield were.

"Welcome traveler." His voice was a deep nasal bellow, that sounded like it was perpetually begging for death, unbeknownst to its owner. "Come, sit with me." He patted a thick red pillow beside him and even offered a bowl of spaghetti to you with an amiable gesture. "I am the Tatetaur. Normally, we must needs battle. But I have an offer. For centuries I have channeled my rage into anime. As we speak, I begin my Gintama marathon, finding a joy that even battle could not provide. I would be honoured if you would join me."

You kick the bowl of spaghetti from his Cheeto dusted fingers, spit in the filthy Otaku's mane and scream to the heavens. "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!"

 _"I s_ _hould not have done that,"_ you think to yourself as he dangles you from his fist, so thick it holds you from ankle to knee.  _"I should not have done that."_

"Baka!" He roars with a thunderous howl, that shakes the lungs inside your chest. "How dare you judge my leisure?" He hurls you against a far off wall, where you find a strangely soft landing. "This is why I hate you humans, always judging and never able to appreciate good anime. Leave this place. I will not give you a second chance!"

He turns away from you, waiting for you to flee to return to his  ~~cartoons~~  art, but a sound, one of tearing rather than footsteps draws his ire.

Between your fists, you hold what was once a single plushie. Now it's a pair, Gintoki's head in your right hand, his body in your left. You keep them in your arms just long enough for him to see, before throwing them over you shoulder with a smirk.

"Ngaaaaaaaaaah!" Rage smother his face as he roars, charging to you, words abandoned for a war-cry, hefting his axe above his head as his tramples forward, hooves sending up clouds of dust behind him thick enough to choke a man.

But the years of Mountain Dew had taken their toll on his lungs and legs. Even closing the short distance between you has left him winded. You spin deftly to the left and he careens past, howling madly as he tries to stop. His forelegs crumple beneath him as he hits the wall in a pile of twitching legs and groans. A wild crack in the stone has appeared where he collided, though still he appears more angry than hurt.

"Do you know how many socially popular people I've beaten up in my life?" Curiosity did little to mask the deadly intent in his iron tones. You shrug casually, drawing a sword from your belt in a quiet whisper.

"One." His face was a study in smug pride, so out of place you struggle to hold back a tide of laughter. The Tatetaur never so much as blinks as you double over, red in the face. He only lowers his head to the ground, voice hushed in a whisper.

"Fear not the anime-fan who has beaten up ten thousand popular people," he announces solemnly, "but fear the anime-fan who has beaten up one person ten thousand times."

He points above him, to the ceiling of the stone chamber, and your eyes widen with rapt horror. Held by chains, a stick-insect of a man swayed above you, bones jutting from his limbs in broken angles, threatening to cut through his paper like skin at any moment. "Flee," he whispers, tears dripping with a painful percussion to the stone floor, " before he makes you read his fanfiction."

What once would have struck a cord of fear in you brushed of your skin like logic off a Donald Trump supporter. He watched the snarl of determination snake across you face. "So you persist? Come then. Come meet your tate."

"I've caber-tossed too many cats to fall before you." You ready your sword, stance wide and body lowered, eyes never once leaving your opponent as he paws at the ground. And when he charges.....

This time you're ready. You hold your ground, unmoving as the Churches stance on gay marriage, until a throb down from you heart to your brain kicks you into action. You rush forward, too lithe for his axe, and bring you sword in a sidewards arc, from hip to hip where the man met the horse, and rolled with the fall, blood spraying from your sword.

Like his plushy, where one Tatetaur would stand, two laid in his place. The horse's body still kicked and spasmed, blood writhing out in slowing pulses from the torso. The man's chest still held the axe and shield, knuckles turned white with his grip.

"All I wanted to do," he whimpered like a dog at the first visit to the vets, "was watch anime with a friend." With that, the life poured out of him, tearing away in a gasp that shivered along his spine, dying in a pool of his own spaghetti sauce.

You sigh as you use the remains of his plushie to wipe the Bolognese sauce from your steel, sheathing your deadly intent and fishing through your pockets for an elbow length glove.

Because if there one thing you learnt from that old lady of Banterbury, its that when monsters dont drop loot, its because its lodged too deep inside them.

 


End file.
